How hard is it to paint a line on the road?
Toronto is already currently ranked as one of the five most-clogged cities in North America, and with 3 million people moving to the GTA between now and 2031, our streets are only going to get more congested — unless we change our attitudes towards cars. 
But the increased congestion is not nearly as troublesome as the increased carbon emissions all these new drivers will bring. Fortunately, combatting the causes of climate change is one of Mayor David Miller’s No. 1 goals. Unfortunately, his failure to build bike lanes doesn’t do much for his credibility.
Toronto’s Bike Plan is starting to become a symbol of council’s inability to accomplish things they deem important. Money or no money, the Bike Plan’s perpetual stall doesn’t bode well for all those new initiatives (such as doubling the tree canopy, implementing green building standards and building a network of light rail transit) that have recently been announced.
How are we supposed to have confidence that our local government has what it takes to fight climate change when they can’t manage to paint a white line down the side of a road? Having a council-approved strategy seemingly hasn’t helped. Toronto’s Bike Plan, passed in 2001, called for over 1,000 km of bike lanes to be built within 10 years. In the last five years, however, a mere 48 km of lanes were completed. If our representatives can’t pull together to build bike lanes (following a plan that most of them voted for six years ago), how do they expect us to believe that they’ll double the canopy of our urban forest (which will require a strategic management plan that has yet to be completed), convince money-hungry developers to build green or stand up to the NIMBYs who’ll fight portions of the Transit City plan, a 120-km network of dedicated streetcar lines? Each one of these proposals will present many more challenges than creating new bike lanes. We have a lot of hard work ahead.
If Miller is serious about tackling global warming, he’s going to have to buckle down and prove to us that he means business. Showing real progress on the Bike Plan would be a good place to start.
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Spacing‘s managing editor Dale Duncan writes a weekly column on City Hall. Each week we’ll post her columns on the Spacing Wire — you can also read it on Eye Weekly‘s website.
9 comments
Dale Duncan used a great many words to say a simple thing: Council has not delivered on its bike plan.
I would personally appreciate some deeper analysis as to why the effort has failed; insinuations that Mr. Miller has misplaced his gonads doesn’t count.
A case study or two would be excellent fodder – the story of one bike lane’s death at the hands of council, of the bureaucracy, of residents, whatever. And I’m not talking about Bloor. The city could build a lane on Bloor/Danforth from Kipling to Victoria Park, and it might be good for 25km out of the 1000km promised. Lots of loudmouths won’t stop talking about the Tooker — best of luck, guys! — but what about the other 85% of the bike network that will be built on streets whose name I’ve never heard of?
Great post Dale!
As for analysis, it’s simply a case of priorities. Whatever the Mayor and Council want to prioritise, they will. Things that don’t get done, are due to a lack of commitment, period.
Putting a dedicated streetcar line on St. Clair was a priority, and they did it, despite the costs and opposition.
Selling off Toronto’s streets to advertisers was a priority, and they did it.
For better or worse, the Mayor gets what he wants.
Are bikes a priority? Are trees? We’ll see.
We need more than just bike lanes. We need a city that recognises bicycles as a legitimate and preferable form of transportation. We need to reach a point where a “bike week” would seem as absurd as a “car week”. Every day is car day. That needs to change. Is the mayor on board? Like I said, we’ll see.
With the City spending a hundred million bankrolling Corus’s bland new office block by Hizzoner’s favourite architect, how can you expect money left for white paint? For shame Dale Duncan.
By now of course we should have a Road Standard Bylaw which designated various roads – arterial, residential and so on – and laying down specifications for transit rights of way, where crosstown cycle lands should be, where taxis can or can’t stand, where street parking is allowed and so on. The reality is that much of that seems governed by pre-amalgamation standards.
The sad reality may be that the Cycling Committee might be the bureaucracy’s way of keeping cyclists at arms length rather than unifying the needs of motorists, transit users, cyclists *and pedestrians* in a single Roads consultation group – as shown by the disastrous and seemingly ad hoc redesign of St Clair West which managed to annoy pretty much every single group mentioned above.
THE BIKE PLAN, AND ITS LACK OF IMPLEMENTATION, IS THE CASE STUDY. There’s not much more evidence needed. This is the City’s own plan, not demnds from cycling activists.
I pretty much lost all hope that we will be getting any expanded cycling infrastructure in this city. Don’t count on it. If it comes, great! If it doesn’t, then we will have to keep managing biking without the much needed lanes.
Well in advance of meeting Tooker, during the Bike Plan consults that Bloor would make a lot of sense as an east-west bike route. That logic is still strong: we need east-west transport, especially linking to the west end as there are few options and the Bike Plan didn’t really do much for a large swath of the core, and the subway really should ease concerns about having access to the street for merchants who might lose a bit of on-street parking, (often found nearby in lots atop the subway).
So re-doing Bloor is cheap, easy and logical, but the emphasis is often putting in bike lanes where cyclists aren’t and where it’s politically easy.
As for being a loudmouth, I do agree some of us are, but forty years after the subway opened, if the city takes about two years to maybe get a report together about repainting 8kms of street in the middle of a smog and climate carisis, not making a bit of noise seems like one supports the problems.
But as someone who’s been plugged into the cycling cttee a bit, yes, it’s possibly a bike-deflecting device, but do not presume that the Bike Plan is the Holy Grail – it’s flawed in many many ways, and it’s often changed and ignored for political reasons, and mere distance doesn’t mean perfection either.
I’d rather have really vital segments like the lanes over the Dundas/College bridge than 6kms somewhere in a well removed setting just because it’s in the BP.
Overall, I’m more worried about how the bike cttee may be not pruned but stumped by 2/3 because the Bike Plan hasn’t been happening, though that’s not the fault of the TCC. So really you should be defending a public input mechanism (though yes it could use some shakes) because it’s a huge job to get way more bikes happening here.
And having bikes blow through stoplights and miss peds and be passholes doesn’t make it easier.
Let’s see, cars are dominant in this city because they physically intimidate cyclists and pedestrians out of their way, and our politicians see drivers as more politically powerful. What do we do to reverse that equation? Demonstrations, the cycling committee, and talking about the environment are apparently not it.
Repeal amalgamation! It has become apparent through observation that we have a megacity council vastly dominated by suburban coucillors and a provincial legislature that additionally oversees it that is also dominated by constutients from suburban municipalities that can easily consist of eight lane arterials and highway interchanges that could easily take up as much land as downtown TO (ie, hwy 400, 407 interchange). Suburban communities think that they are subsidizing the inner cities but they are wrong! Its time that the older part of the city, namely the REAL city of Toronto separate itself from the suburban mess that has spawned from it. Wanna drive your Excursion through Kensington market while intimidating the bicyclists? Pay for it! Driving is a PRIVELEGE, not a right! Do people from say Israel come to see the Erin Mills Town Centre in Mississauga or do they wanna see Casa Loma? Enough said. The suburbs took control of the inner city from from the inner city by electing Mike Harris (as well as the complacent McGunity that can’t seem to truly stop the destruction of the Morane) and now its time to take it back.
Sincerely
Jordan Kerim
I would like to make a proposal to city hall here in Powell River to start introducing bike lanes. Could you please send a sample or two?